Trout farmer, rugby star and the spark that fires the Springbok’s Bomb Squad into life, Kwagga Smith is a freaking legend of the oval ball who (as far as the fan boy editor of this rag is concerned) should never have to pay for another drink for the rest of his life. He’s also issue 54’s Lifer.

The first fish I remember catching were bass. Growing up on our family farm as a kid, my weekends were spent going to the dam, fishing with my dad and my brother. My brother is two years older than me and he was my best friend on the farm. Both he and my dad are big fishermen too, from deep sea to freshwater, to tiger fishing. On weekends we’d take the quad bike, drive down to the dam, dig up earth worms and then catch bass on worms, and on conventional plastics. After a while catching them with the spinning rod was getting too easy so we switched over to flies. That was the best thing for me – late afternoon, just before dark, take a small popper and just throw that. Those big bass are amazing.

The farm I grew up on is between Lydenburg and Ohrigstad about an hour away from Dullstroom. After school, I was based in Stellenbosch with the Blitzbok sevens team for six months and then based in Johannesburg for the next six months with the Lions. That carried on for eight years, and then I signed a contract to play rugby in Japan. In 2020 during Covid my wife Ilke and I decided to buy a trout farm called Kareekraal near Dullstroom. There was no rugby because of the pandemic, so for eight months we just worked on the farm literally every day, working on the dams and building three cottages. It’s now doing really well and we are looking to expand a bit with three more cabins. Then we can sleep 30 people. The farm is 200 hectares with three trout dams, which is a lekker size. In Japan we live in a really cool town called Iwata, where all the Yamaha stuff is made. It’s Yamaha head headquarters worldwide and most of the Japanese guys that play with me still work for the Yamaha company. So we have two homes. One is our apartment in Japan, which we just lock up when we leave there and the other is the farmhouse when back in South Africa.

I love coffee. I have my own AeroPress, my own portable grinder and I take my own beans with me. There’s a little coffee roastery in Dullstroom attached to Anvil Brewery. I normally buy their Black Fritz blend, which is a mix of Ethiopian and Brazilian beans.

“I made my dams real deep. One is six metres deep. Or three RG Snymans.”

A typical day for me with the Boks starts with coffee. After breakfast we normally have meetings or a gym session, then lunch. You then go to the field, do your field session, then get back and do your recovery. Mondays are a full day because it’s when we do the reviews. We start at 8am and you get back to the hotel at 5:30pm. Tuesdays are very similar and then Wednesday is the off day. Our weekend is from a Wednesday afternoon till a Friday morning. If we are in Joburg or anywhere close and I have an off day, I normally shoot through to the farm. I’m not scared of driving. I’ll leave on a Wednesday afternoon and head back on the Friday morning, straight into the captain’s run before the match on a Saturday. Sundays don’t count because you are so flipping sore, you don’t want to do anything. And normally, we travel on Sundays. If we are overseas, if I can’t go fishing, I try to play a bit of golf on off days.

SHOP THE MISSION

My go-to setup is a 5-weight Orvis rod and reel with a black Woolly Bugger with an orange bead – a Spiedkop – and a sinking line. I cleaned and rebuilt the dams so I know exactly where all the structure is, where it gets deep and where I put a pile of rocks. I made a few structures in the dams, but I normally don’t tell people where they are. There’s a lot of fish sitting around and I made my dams real deep. One is six metres deep. Or three RG Snymans. The fish get big with the biggest rainbow now at 4.2kg and the biggest brown 2.5kg, which is not massive, but it’ll keep growing.

The best advice I have ever been given came from my dad. He said keep doing what you enjoy and try to do more of it, because then you’ll be a better person. For me that means being on the farm and investing in my own little dream that I have. I get so much joy out of it that if everything else doesn’t go my way, it doesn’t matter. It’s just temporary. At least I’ve always got the thing that I love to do. Family is also really important to me. My wife and I are partners in business. We are really happy and we do everything together. She plays golf and she loves fishing – especially tiger fishing – and that’s lekker because we can share it. It’s not like you do this and I do that. We are in it together.

Read the rest of Kwagga’s Lifer interview in issue 54 below.